JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Childhood unintentional injuries represent a major public health issue affecting the lives and health of children worldwide, with the risk of occurrence and injury types dynamically changing across different ages and developmental stages. To effectively prevent unintentional injuries, intervention measures must be adjusted based on actual circumstances and kept up to date in real time. Measures leveraging mobile health technologies can meet this dynamic requirement, but their specific implementation strategies and effectiveness in this field remain unclear at present.

Objective:

To conduct a scoping review of research on the application of mobile health technologies in the prevention and emergency of unintentional injuries among children, aiming to comprehensively understand the types of mobile health technologies used, intervention contents, and outcome measures, thereby providing a reference for related studies.

Methods:

Following the methodological framework of a scoping review, we systematically searched 5 databases—PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL—from their inception to December 31, 2025. Data extraction and synthesis were performed on the included studies.

Results:

Of the 1,085 articles, 22 (2%) met the inclusion criteria. Additionally, 1 reference was included during full-text reading. Therefore, a total of 23 studies were included in this research. The included studies comprised 14 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (60.9%), 4 quasi-experimental studies (17.4%), 3 mixed-method studies (13%), 1 qualitative study (4.3%), and 1 descriptive study (4.3%). Interventions targeted children's caregivers, school-aged children, and school teachers. Mobile health technologies include Applications (Apps), Internet platforms, Social media, Virtual reality(VR), and serious games. Intervention contents included health education, interactive communication, monitoring and reminders, behavioral training, surveys and documentation, risk assessment, and emergency features. Outcome measures encompassed childhood unintentional injury rates, injury-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (KAB), as well as other psychological and social indicators, and mobile health technology feasibility metrics.

Conclusions:

Mobile health technology-driven interventions can enhance caregivers' and children's awareness about unintentional injury safety while improving related attitudes and behavioral competencies. Future efforts should optimize functional design to strengthen users' willingness to continue using as well as behavioral adherence, expand the contents of health education about critical aspects such as post-incident emergency response, develop scientifically rigorous outcome assessment tools, and conduct high-quality, large-scale, long-term studies to evaluate the effectiveness in reducing childhood unintentional injury rates. Clinical Trial: OSF Registries osf.io/y4bhs; https://osf.io/8qpr6(DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/3MXSA)